世界杯专栏

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The first rule of football is…

don’t call it soccer

football的第一条规则是......

不要称之为soccer

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By Fiona McPherson

The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language—a phrase commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw sometime in the 1940s, although apparently not to be found in any of his published works. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to say that they are two countries separated by a different ball—a sentiment that is particularly apt when football’s World Cup comes around.

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美国和英国是由共同语言隔开的两个国家，该说法通常认为是萧伯纳在20世纪40年代某个时候提出的，尽管我们并未在其发表的任何著作中发现过这一说法。或许，我们可以换一种看待问题的方式，称它们是被不同的球类分开的两个国家——足球盛事“世界杯”如期开赛，这样表达特别合适吧。

Of course, it isn’t quite as simple as that. For years we’ve heard how football is becoming ever more popular in the USA. Major League Soccer’s profile continues to build, and indeed, the US even hosted the World Cup in 1994, and have twice won the FIFA Women’s World Cup. But despite this, football pales into insignificance compared with other big US sports. The National (American) Football League brought in 9 billion dollars in revenue in 2013, whereas Major League Soccer earned only about half a billion; even the National Hockey League earned over 3 billion. If you’re one of those Americans who hasn’t yet become a diehard fan, here’s a potted (and tongue-in-cheek) guide to bluffing your way into sounding knowledgeable about the beautiful game.

当然，事情并非如表述的那么简单。过去几年，足球在美国越来越受欢迎。美国职业足球大联盟的形象还在建立中，事实上，美国已经于1994年主办了世界杯，并曾两次夺得国际足联女子世界杯冠军。尽管如此，与美国其他大型体育项目相比，足球仍显得微不足道。2013年，美国职业橄榄球联盟（美式足球联盟）带来了90亿美元的收入，而美国职业足球大联盟仅赚了约5亿美元，连国家冰球联盟都赚了30多亿美元。如果你是个还没成为足球死忠粉的美国人，那么这份（半开玩笑的）简明指南会让你对这一“美丽的运动”有更深入的了解。

The first rule of football is….

football的第一条规则是……

…don’t call it soccer, certainly not within earshot of someone who thinks of it as ‘proper’ football. This is probably the most crucial element in giving the impression that you’ve been into this game for decades. Naturally this can be difficult if you are trying to differentiate between two different sports (in the UK it is easy—American footballv football). Soccer, the word, comes from an abbreviation for Association(from Association Football, the ‘official’ name for the game) plus the addition of the suffix -er. This suffix (originally Rugby School slang, and then adopted by Oxford University), was appended to ‘shortened’ nouns, in order to form jocular words. Ruggeris probably the most common example, but other examples included in the Oxford English Dictionaryare brekker(for breakfast), bonner(for bonfire), and cupper(a series of intercollegiate matches played in competition for a cup).

……不要称之为soccer，当然，对于认为football合适的人而言不在考虑范围内。这可能是最重要的因素，让人感觉你已经热衷这项运动好几十年了。如果你试图区分两种不同的运动，在美国显然非常困难，在英国则很容易——American football美式橄榄球，football足球。soccer一词来源于Association（Association Football，该项运动的“官方”名称）的缩写加上后缀er。添加该后缀（原为Rugby School的俚语，后被牛津大学采用）到“缩短”的名词上，形成诙谐词。rugger可能是最常见的例子，《牛津英语词典》中还收录了其他例子，包括brekker（breakfast）、bonner（bonfire）和cupper（cup 一系列争夺奖杯的校际比赛）。

Apart from its origins being decidedly British, you will find plenty of examples of soccer being used by British people over the decades. But in terms of the history of the language, it’s something of a 19th-century johnny-come-lately: by contrast, football has been used since the 1400s. In modern usage, in order to blend in with the diehard fans, it’s preferable to stick to football—and, when speaking to these fans, never, ever call it Association Football.

除其英国起源外，你会发现英国人在过去几十年中使用soccer的诸多例子。然而，就该词的语言史而言，它还是19世纪出现的新事物；相比之下，football一词自15世纪以来沿用至今。在现代用法中，为了与死忠球迷融合，还是最好使用football，在与这些球迷交谈时，千万千万不要称之为Association Football。

A quick reference to sound like a football native

速成指南：让你听上去像个真球迷

Match vs game

比赛

Match is used in relation to football, but game(used in American Football) is actually the older sense. Game, meaning a competitive activity governed by rules of play, is found in Old English—while matchin a similar sense dates to the 16th century. (The word matchis also found in Old English, with reference to spouses or people of equal standing.)

match的使用与足球有关，而game（用于美式橄榄球）的含义实际上更古老。game指受游戏规则支配的竞争性活动，可在古英语中找到，而类似含义的match可追溯到16世纪。（古英语中也有match一词，指配偶或地位平等的人。）

Pitch vs field

赛场

Pitch, meaning ‘the area of play in a field game’ and used in football, is quite a recent addition to English—currently first found in the late 19th century—and field(with a similar definition, used for American football) predates it by over 150 years. Yet fashions change, and you should refer to a football pitchif you want to be accepted by aficionados in Britain.

pitch指“活动比赛的场地”，一般用于足球，最先发现于19世纪末，是对最近几年英语的补充，而field（具有相似含义，一般用于美式橄榄球）要比其早150余年。然而，时代在变化，如果想被英国球迷接纳，最好使用football pitch。

Boots vs cleats/shoes

球鞋

The distinction between boots(used in football) and shoes(in American football) isn’t particularly noteworthy, but the use of cleatsis more intriguing. It’s actually an example of synecdoche: the part is used to represent the whole. This becomes clear if you realize that cleatsare the projections on the sole of a shoe, designed to prevent the wearer losing their footing (which are commonly called studsin British English).

用于足球的boots和用于美式橄榄球的shoes之间的区别不是特别值得注意，但cleats的使用更耐人寻味。这实际上是个借喻：以局部代表全部。如果了解cleats（鞋钉）是鞋底的突出部分，旨在防止穿者滑倒（通常英式英语中称为studs），这一用法就很清楚了。

Extra time vs overtime

加时

As the name suggests,extra timeis a further period of play in football, added on to a game if the scores are equal and the match must be decided (not to be confused with injury time, added to compensate for time lost dealing with injuries). Overtimedescribes the same event in North American games, drawing on the older sense of ‘time worked in addition to one’s normal working hours’. The first use of both terms is currently dated to the early 20th century, with extra timecoming first.

顾名思义，extra time即足球比赛的加时赛，如果得分相同，就要加时，以分出胜负，不要与injury time（伤停补时）相混淆哦。overtime与其含义相同，一般用于北美赛事，比较久远的解释是“正常工作时间之外的工作时间”。这两个词的首次使用目前可追溯到20世纪初，extra time先出现。

To mark vs to guard vs to cover

盯人

Guardingin basketball, and markingin a variety of British games including football, means keeping close to an opponent in order to prevent them from getting or passing the ball. To add to the international confusion, in Australian Rules Football, markinga ball means catching it from a kick of at least ten metres and is to be celebrated—whereas, unless you’re the goalkeeper (or in the crowd), catching the ball at all in football is a handballand a foul. In American football, a defensive player will cover an offensive player.

guarding用于篮球运动，marking用于包括足球在内的各种英式比赛，意思是：靠近对手，以防止他们拿球或传球。在澳式足球中，其规则更令外国人困惑，marking a ball意味着从至少十米处踢球接球，且进球要庆祝，然而，除非你是守门员（或在场下人群中），否则在足球比赛中用手接球即判手球犯规。在美式橄榄球中，防守球员要cover（掩护）进攻球员。

Kit vs uniform

队服

A uniform (worn for American sports) may sound more militaristic than a kit (worn in football), but the latter actually has fairly regimental (albeit more informal) origins—the sense comes from kit as the equipment of a solider (also known as articles of kit). This sense, in turn, relates to an earlier sense of kit as a container for carrying commodities—from the Dutch kitte, a wooden vessel made of hooped staves.

用于美式橄榄球的uniform可能听起来比足球运动中的kit更具军事特征，但实际上后者才是队服（尽管较不正式）的起源，该kit的含义即士兵的装备（也称为articles of kit）。反过来，这一含义又与kit的早期含义有关，早期意思是“用作货物运输的容器”——源于荷兰语的kitte（一种用箍制狭条做成的木桶）。

There’s no other way

进球得分，别无他法

In American Football, there are numerous ways to score. In football, there is only one. If the ball ends up in the back of the net (provided there has been no infringement of the rules), it’s a goal. Whether scored by a header, from the penalty spot, a volley, route one, scissor kick, after a glorious mazy run from one end of the pitch to the other, or even if it hits a defending player on the bottom/knee/shoulder and deflects past the goalkeeper into the goal, it’s just a goal, and only counts for one point.

在美式橄榄球中，有很多方法得分。而在足球中，方法只有一个。如果球最终入网（前提是没有违反规则），即得分。无论是头球、点球、凌空抽射、直线踢、倒钩，还是从球场一端到另一端的迷踪式跑位，甚或击中防守球员臀部/膝盖/肩膀后变线绕过守门员进球，即得分，进一球算一分。

0-0 can be exciting

零比零可能同样激动人心

It’s probably a bit of an urban myth that Americans bemoan the fact that it’s perfectly possible to sit through 90 minutes of football, and for the end result to be 0-0. Meaning that no one scored. While any self-respecting football fan will have witnessed the dourest of dour games which end up as a goalless draw, there are action-packed games which inexplicably end up goalless due to one or more goalies playing a blinder. You’ll just have to believe us on this. While you can’t immediately tell from the numbers written as symbols, that ‘0-0’ is nil-nil rather than zero-zero. A good way to expose your ignorance amongst football fans is to refer to a result being two-zero, as the 0 is always termed nilin football. Nilis a contraction of the Latin nihil, meaning ‘nothing’, and also to be found in the word nihilism(the belief that nothing in the world has a real existence).

有这样的说法（很可能是谣传），美国人会抱怨，很可能坐了整场90分钟看足球，结果最终比分0-0。这就是说没有一方得分。典型的足球迷都会见证到以零进球收场的严峻比赛，不少比赛过程令人激动，但却令人费解地以零比零平局结束，这可能是守门员做出了一次或多次精彩扑救。对此你只需相信即可。不过你可能无法立即从所用的符号上分辨出比分，因为“0-0”写作nil-nil，而非zero-zero。判断是不是伪球迷的一个好方法即看其是不是把结果称为two-zero，因为在足球比赛中0要记作nil。nil是拉丁语nihil的缩写，意思是nothing，也存在于nihilism（认为世界上没有任何东西是真实存在的）一词中。

And last, but not least, don’t worry too much about explaining the offside rule. Plenty of people can’t.

最后一点也很重要，不用为如何解释越位规则太过担心，因为很多人说不清楚。

（文字整理自“牛津词典”）